Act soon or face another Guernica

We now know that Libya is heading into a full on civil-war and that Gaddafi is prepared to do pretty much anything to stay in power. The former interior minister Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abid, admittedly a partial source, says that he defected after arguing with the Libyan leader over his plan to bomb the rebel stronghold of Benghzai.

In an ideal world, the United Nations would move to impose a no fly zone on Libya. But this is unlikely to happen. Russia and China, for obvious reasons, want to uphold the principle of non-interference in another state’s affairs even if that state is brutally repressing its own people.  

This puts the ball in Nato’s court as the largest military alliance of liberal democracies there is. A warning from Nato, issued as soon as foreign nationals have been evacuated, that any Libyan aircraft involved in actions against civilians would be shot down would have a significant deterrent effect. Pilots, several of whom have already flown to Malta rather than carry out their orders, would be far more likely to refuse to carry out bombing raids if they knew that if they did so they were liable to be shot down.

Without this deterrent, the risk that we could be about to see the carpet bombing of civillians will be substantially increased. We must remmeber that Gaddafi will not be held back by any of the normal limitations on conduct. This is a leader prepared to commit the defining tyrannical sin of setting foreign mercenaries loose on his own countrymen.